International Movies to Avoid: April 2016 Edition

This is the second installment of my continuing series of the worst international movies out there.

Don't watch them!

Naxal 

India (Bengali), 2015
109 min, drama
Directed by Debaditya Bandyopadhyay
Starring Mithun Chakraborty and Dhritiman Chatterjee

How do you make a movie about Naxalites boring? Focus on their middle class struggles.

No, really.

What could have been an interesting film about people with a history of violence and revolutionary feelings in present-day Bengal quickly falls apart into a disjointed, incomprehensible massacre of a movie. I mean that in the worst way possible.

International Movies to Avoid: April 2015 edition

This is a round-up post for all the bad movies that Tintin and I have seen in the past few months.

Source: Wikipedia

Badshahi Angti 

India (Bengali) 2014
Detective thriller
Directed by Sandip Ray

The latest in the series translating Satyajit Ray's popular "Feluda" stories to the big screen is disappointing all around. Feluda is Satyajit Ray's Sherlock Holmes-type detective, solving mysterious crimes throughout India and the world. In this one, the young Feluda finds himself in Lucknow with his cousin and uncle. Rather than having their planned relaxing vacation, they stumble across a mystery in the form of the priceless "Ring of Aurangzeb" and a neighbor whose large menagerie contains various kinds of poisonous snakes, spiders, and other dangerous beasts. Who has taken the ring, and who is this eccentric neighbor?

While the story itself sounds fascinating, this movie version's excruciatingly slow pace and weak dialogue did not lend the necessary urgency to Satyajit Ray's famous detective. Much of the movie is taken up with the type of scenic shots that are usually not seen outside of tourism commercials. This distracted from the plot too much to make me actually interested in the film. Recommended only if you're a Feluda fan.